Two months on from the unprecedented high of the UEFA Cup final, Boro have sold just over 20,000 season tickets.

That would constitute a potential 20% fall from last season's figure of just under 24,000.

It is a collapse by almost a third from the peak of 28,500 Red Bookers in 1999 and light years away from the halcyon days of full houses, weekly attendance records and waiting lists of those eager to be part of the hip new scene.

That buzz is over. Those who thought of the Red Book as a fashion accessory are long gone and it now seems all those people who have been threatening for years to wrap in and "pick and choose" their games have finally done it.

Yet Boro are enjoying a golden age of sustained top flight football, a trophy win still fresh in the memory, and their last game was a never-to-be-forgotten European final.

And among the most recent home games were the furious last-gasp fightbacks in fantastic four-goal victories over Basel and Bucharest on the road to Eindhoven, plus another storming second half in a gripping 4-2 FA Cup quarter-final victory over Charlton, so it is clear Boro can entertain.

In those games Boro served up pulsating shows of power and passion that had the Riverside rocking and ticked all the right boxes for all but the most hard-to-please Chickenrunners

But season tickets don't cover cup games and the Teesside public are showing a reluctance to stump up the cash for the more mundane bread and butter Premiership fare.

Whatever the excitement offered in the UEFA Cup, the most frequently voiced complaint is that much of the 19-game league programme at the Riverside was, well... boring.

That is open to dispute. There were stirring demolitions of Manchester United and Chelsea, a gritty win over Arsenal and a ding-dong 4-3 win over high-flying Bolton.

But it also featured insipid home defeats to Sunderland, Charlton, Blackburn and the Aston Villa mauling, plus a string of games like Portsmouth and Manchester City where Boro looked desperate for a draw as they lined up. Those have helped shape the public consciousness - often echoed on the Three Legends - that the team was dire.

Steve McClaren's safety-first approach, instinctive first-half caution and unwillingness to gamble in a bid for all three points was cited as a cause for discontent over recent seasons and under McClaren season tickets sales went down every year, even after the Carling Cup triumph.

But McClaren has gone and with him the reason - the excuse - offered by many for staying away. The new boss - a popular and widely respected one - has pledged attacking football and acknowledged the need to entertain the people who fund the wages.

So why have the numbers of pre-paid punters continued to spiral downwards?

Certainly it is expensive, but not prohibitive. On-day prices are punitive - £31 was the cheapest adult ticket for a category A game last season - but in economic terms a season ticket represents a sizeable discount at £20 a game in the cheap seats.

And there is also a financial knock-on effect from Europe: many fans spent their season ticket money - and much more - in Eindhoven on transport, hotels or buying a black market ticket.

Sacrifices made to back Boro in Rome, Basel and Bucharest are still being paid for.

The club are aware of that. Prices have been frozen this year and youth concessions extended to all sections of the ground, while Boro made liberal use of one-off special ticket offers last year, so no-one can say the club don't take the cost issue seriously.

But the horse has already bolted. There is a marked trend across the game that has hit Boro harder than most.

There is widespread apathy because of an uncompetitive Premiership distorted by money and widespread contempt for spoilt cheats earning exorbitant wages while rarely producing the goods.

And there are constant complaints about a sanitised matchday experience and a stadium atmosphere so thin that NASA could train astronauts in it.

Increasing numbers of fans are walking out of the ground and heading to the pub.

As ticket prices - and players' wages - have shot up, it has been matched by the steep rise in the number of games covered by satellite TV.

Between Sky Sports and the now widely-available Arabic and Scandinavian channels, almost every Premiership match is shown live.

Teesside is no exception. Many who would once have gone to the Riverside now form a bar-stool brigade of small-screen spectators. The attractions are obvious: free entry, no half-time scrum for a pint, no overly zealous stewarding, no ban on smoking and no queue for the underpass.

Many old fashioned Holgate End types who feel the game they loved has moved away from them have retreated to their locals, where they can stand with their mates, beer in hand and shout and scream to their hearts content without being told to sit down, shut up or stop swearing. And you can buy a lot of beer for £30.

It is now an engrained part of the landscape and offers a big challenge to the club.

But not only have Boro fallen foul of a pervading change in culture but the product itself has been undermined.

The initial unique selling points of the Red Book were that it guaranteed entry at a time of sell-outs and that it guaranteed priority for big-match tickets like cup finals.

But with declining crowds the necessity of the season ticket faded years ago. Sell-outs are things of the past. There were only four league gates over 30,000 last term; for the majority of games thousands of seats were going begging.

Even for big games a season ticket is not needed. For the FA Cup semi-final at Villa Park in April tickets went on general sale, albeit only after the mandatory queue chaos and on-line booking fiasco.

But more importantly the Red Book concept has been badly dented by the chaotic ticket distribution for Eindhoven. Many of the longest serving supporters, the alphabet elite with S and T prefixes, failed to get a ticket. The crucial promise of cup final tickets was shown to be a hollow one.

There are undoubtedly reasons for that - a scandalously small initial allocation being the chief one - but that does not alter the fact that they missed out in the free-for-all. For 4,000 or so S and T ticket holders, one of the key pillars supporting the Red Book concept was kicked away.

Many who knew they did not need a Red Book to ensure entry had hung on in the hope that if, when Boro reached a final they would be there - without paying a tout £300.

With that guarantee gone and with plenty of seats free it is no surprise that season ticket sales have dropped.